Nominal possession in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish: the role of animacy in the emergence of grammar (original) (raw)

This study examines number agreement within the noun phrase in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (PAS), and shows evidence for the existence of a previously undocumented morphosyntactic feature. In PAS, the possessed noun does not necessarily agree in number with the possessor pronoun, yielding the following possibilities: singular concord: su canoa; plural concord: sus canoas; and, number mismatch: sus canoa. The fourth logical possibility, su canoas, has not been attested. A usage-based approach reveals two findings with respect to the innovative construction. First, its distribution is impacted by gender and place. Second, the possessor pronoun has semantic restrictions: its anaphoric referent is highly likely to be not only multiple entities but also human. These results place animacy as a key factor in the emergence of the innovative pattern.